Conventional implanted medical devices (IMDs) such as cardiac pacemakers, defibrillator or other neurostimulation devices (e.g., a phrenic nerve stimulators, deep brain stimulators, cochlear implants or vagal nerve stimulators) and the like are implanted within millions of patients. Unfortunately, these IMDs are incompatible for use with magnetic resonance (MR) imaging (MRI) methods for many reasons including that conventional IMDs may interact with fields (e.g., static and/or pulsed) of MR systems. For example, MR systems during imaging utilize radiofrequency (RF) emissions provided within a static magnetic field for eliciting emissions from a region of interest (ROI) such as a portion of a patient's anatomy. These elicited emissions are received by the MR system and are utilized for creating an image of the ROI by the MR system.
However, for a patient which has an IMD, the conductive portions such as lead wire of the IMD may act as an antenna to the RF emissions of the MR system which may result in RF heating of the lead wire due to induced standing waves within the lead wire. RF induced heating of the lead wire may cause heating of nearby tissue resulting in general patient discomfort and/or burning of the tissue. Accordingly, patients in which conventional IMDs are implanted cannot be safely scanned using MR methods and are typically scanned using less desirable imaging methods such as computed tomography (CT), X-ray methods, and the like, which emit ionizing radiation and may have inferior image resolution particularly of soft tissue present in the ROI.
Accordingly, embodiments of the present system may overcome these and/or other disadvantages of conventional systems and methods.